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In the nineteenth century, Scotland had an economy and a society subject to one of the most rapid early transformations in industrial experience of any country in the Western world. Unique among the smaller European countries with peasant-based local economies surviving well into the nineteenth century, though as yet subject to little comparative analysis, Scotland's dramatic shift from a mostly underdeveloped, rural backwater in the mid-eighteenth century to one of the key industrial hubs of the British empire by the mid-nineteenth, was largely orchestrated from above, by government and its...

In the nineteenth century, Scotland had an economy and a society subject to one of the most rapid early transformations in industrial experience of any country in the Western world. Unique among the smaller European countries with peasant-based local economies surviving well into the nineteenth century, though as yet subject to little comparative analysis, Scotland's dramatic shift from a mostly underdeveloped, rural backwater in the mid-eighteenth century to one of the key industrial hubs of the British empire by the mid-nineteenth, was largely orchestrated from above, by government and its agencies, and by wealthy landowners. This article examines the impact of industrialization in Scotland on the Scottish people, and on the workplace, labour markets, conditions of life, culture, and environment. It also focuses on some of the heroes who emerged during the industrialization, including inventors, businessmen, and some industrial workers.